ASHEVILLE - Had it not been a courtroom, the scene on the fifth floor of the Buncombe County Courthouse would have looked like any other graduation ceremony, as about 100 family members and friends assembled wearing huge smiles and semi-formal attire.

Pamphlets of the day's events were handed out on thick cardstock while people reserved seats near the front of the room.

Parents snapped pictures and took selfies with graduates of Buncombe's drug court, all of them former addicts who were convicted of felonies and diverted to the program rather than jail.

Among the group of animated people filling a courtroom typically reserved for delivering sentences was Hope Bishop, 40. She nervously crumpled her graduation speech as she sat alongside her father, Rich Bishop, and her boyfriend, Brian Shepherd, 38, also a recovering addict.

Tears were already forming in Shepherd's eyes as he held her hand and kept telling her how proud he was. Rich Bishop was barely holding back tears of his own as Hope practiced her speech under her breath.

Every graduate of drug court is required to deliver a speech about their road to recovery.

The court started as a way to help people avoid time in jail after convictions while giving them the structure to help overcome addictions.

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Hope Bishop reads through her speech at the Buncombe County Courthouse before the start of her drug court graduation ceremony Friday, February 2, 2018. (Photo: Matt Burkhartt/mburkhartt@citizen-times.com)

More recently, many graduates are overcoming opioid addictions, reflecting the nation's opioid epidemic.

Judges in Buncombe County courtrooms were seeing roughly one in 10 people addicted to opioids in early 2013. By the end of that same year, that number jumped to seven in 10.

Heroin was the opiate of choice, but only after addicts could no longer afford daily doses of Percocet or Vicodin, which drove them to the streets to find heroin, said Tracie Bodford, supervisor of Buncombe's drug treatment court.

"The goal of drug treatment court is to help people recover from their addiction and stay out of crime," Bodford said.

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Hope Bishop and her boyfriend Brian Shepherd stand hand-in-hand in a circle with others graduating from drug court with Bishop at the Buncombe County Courthouse Friday, February 2, 2018. (Photo: Matt Burkhartt/mburkhartt@citizen-times.com)

If they succeed, recovering addicts have the chance to see their records expunged within two years – if they were a first-time felon and avoided rearrest during that time.

Five people, including Bishop, graduated earlier this month, leaving with both their sobriety and a second chance at life. Four had been addicted to opioids.

Drug treatment court is rigorous. Those who do slip over the course of 15 to 24 months may be sent to jail for missing a meeting with a probation officer.

Buncombe's drug court started in 2000 and there have been 183 graduates. Of the 46 graduates since 2013, only seven have committed another felony or relapsed.

As the opioid epidemic started to peak four years ago, the number of graduates slowed, reflecting the hold opioid addiction has taken on the lives of addicts.

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Brian Shepherd, boyfriend of Hope Bishop embraces her before they leave for her drug court graduation ceremony at the Buncombe County Courthouse Friday, February 2, 2018. (Photo: Matt Burkhartt/mburkhartt@citizen-times.com)

There were 12 graduates in 2013. A year later there were six.

"We started seeing fewer opioid addicts being able to maintain sobriety," said Al Williams, Assistant District Attorney. "Because of that, we've had to change the program to focus on the individual as opposed to treating everyone the same."

Despite the demands of the program, it offers those that would end up in prison a new hope - if they qualify after being recommended by the district attorney, their assigned attorney meets with Buncombe County Judge Alan Thornburg to assess their chances of success.

The recidivism rate for those who relapse or commit another felony after graduating is 19 percent.

"We only take specific types of felonies and these people have to do whatever it takes to succeed," Bodford said. "We don't take people in who are drug traffickers or major drug dealers. We take people who are substance dependent and their crimes have to be centered around their addiction."

The most typical crimes Bodford and her teams see are breaking and entering, property crime, embezzlement and repeat offenders.

Buncombe is the only drug court in North Carolina that accepts habitual felons, Bodford said.

The Trump administration assigned a commission on drug addiction and the opioid crisis late last year, and opening more drug courts has been a focus, as announced in November.

The nation had 665 drug courts in 2000. Today, there are 3,100, including 13 in North Carolina, with Buncombe being the only one in Western North Carolina.

The drug court team in Buncombe, which includes assistant district attorney Williams, Thornburg and Bodford, among others, said the opioid crisis is unlike anything they've seen since the drug court started in 2000.

The threat of fentanyl and high numbers of overdose deaths has been shocking, Williams said.

Fentanyl killed at least 127 people in Western North Carolina from 2010-16, according to the North Carolina Injury and Prevention Branch.

"Some of them that come to us have lived terrible lives and see the police and courts as against them and they don’t trust anyone at first," Williams said. "Over time, they come into court and see how people treat each other and usually you wear that wall down, sometimes it takes a week and sometimes it takes months."

But for Bishop, she was waiting for something like drug court to intervene before she overdosed and died.

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Hope Bishop smokes a cigarette outside her apartment in Asheville before her drug court graduation ceremony at the Buncombe County Courthouse, Friday, February 2, 2018. (Photo: Matt Burkhartt/mburkhartt@citizen-times.com)

Life as a heroin addict

Bishop first tried heroin as a teenager but didn't like it. Born and raised in a small town in Massachusetts, heroin was everywhere.

She suffered a broken kneecap in a car accident while raising two children in Massachusetts five years ago. A doctor prescribed Percoset, an opioid, for the pain, and that led to the addiction, Bishop said.

"I felt like this euphoric feeling you get when you take pills. You have more energy, life problems don’t really seem as bad," Bishop said. "I realized I was dependent when the doctor told me I was healed and wasn't going to prescribe me any more pills and my reaction was - I am not ready."

After her pills ran out, Bishop said she turned to heroin and began a new life that consisted of chasing the next high. Finding and shooting heroin became her only daily goal.

"I don't think if I had ever gotten in the car accident I would have been an addict," she said.

Her mother helped raise her children while she was out using. Drugs had taken control of her life, she said. Even her sister during that time died of a heroin overdose.

Her father was living in Chapel Hill and their relationship had gone from strained to completely broken. He couldn't handle waiting to hear of bad news involving his daughter, Rich Bishop said.

"It is the most terrible thing you can ever endure as a parent, wondering if your baby girl is going to survive another night as a heroin addict," he said.

It wasn't until Bishop moved to Asheville to focus on her sobriety almost two years ago that things changed. But they got worse before they got better. Again, she tried multiple rehab programs but nothing seemed to stick.

The last time she tried getting sober she relapsed on alcohol after 10 days and was caught trying to mail Suboxone, a medication-assisted treatment for addicts, into Buncombe County jail. That's when she was referred to Bodford.

That meeting changed her life and she hasn't used since, Bishop said. It's been 21 months.

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Hope Bishop paints her nails in her apartment in Asheville before her drug court graduation ceremony at the Buncombe County Courthouse, Friday, February 2, 2018. (Photo: Matt Burkhartt/mburkhartt@citizen-times.com)

The journey to graduation was not easy - she was sent to jail overnight on multiple occasions for missing meetings and the emotional toll of the program has since left her drained.

But it was the first time in years she faced life and its ups and downs without being sedated by drugs.

"I remember when Bodford looked at me and said, 'Hope, you may be an addict but you are also a good mother, a good person and a good daughter,' that just made me heal," Bishop said. "They don’t just look at me like an addict in drug court and it gives me confidence to just look at myself like that too."

Bishop never thought she would be able to mend her relationship with her dad but now they speak for hours on the phone every week. Her children still live in Massachusetts and her oldest, 18, is attending University of Amherst.

Bishop is enrolled at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and wants to be a social worker.

"Hope would tell me all the time 'dad, I am going to graduate college and I am going to do things with my life' and as sad as this sounds, I stopped believing in her," Rich Bishop said. "Now I have my daughter back and I know she is going to do great things."

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Hope Bishop does her makeup in her bathroom at her apartment in Asheville before her drug court graduation ceremony at the Buncombe County Courthouse, Friday, February 2, 2018. (Photo: Matt Burkhartt/mburkhartt@citizen-times.com)

Opioids changing drug court

Thornburg was a judge during the crack epidemic and now he leads drug court in the time of the opioid epidemic. To him, they are all serious drug crises.

But the difference between crack and opioids is that many heroin users are not getting second chances because they die of overdoses, and that worries him, he said.

Williams agreed and said that opiate users have such a difficult time maintaining sobriety that it has forced everyone working in the addiction space to drastically change their approach.

Thornburg sees his role as a judge of drug court to be two-fold - first upholding the law and second treating each case individually and with special attention.

Opioids have really shaped the way they treat people who come under their care, Thornburg said, because there are so many other aspects to their addiction.

"We treat them as individuals and not just numbers in the system," Thornburg said. "Every person is complicated - there are mental health issues, addiction, trauma - and the whole team tries to come up with appropriate treatment for them and we tweak it as we get to know them."

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Hope Bishop does her makeup in her bathroom at her apartment in Asheville before her drug court graduation ceremony at the Buncombe County Courthouse, Friday, February 2, 2018. (Photo: Matt Burkhartt/mburkhartt@citizen-times.com)

Few places in the criminal justice system do that, he said, and they are moving more toward restorative justice.

Controversies over the approach are not new to the team, with some believing addicts, like all felons, should just get jail time. But Thornburg said he believes drug court can help change someone's life to the point where they can be a functioning member of society, as opposed to just sitting in jail.

He likes to make people aware of the financial burdens of sending someone to jail - roughly $30,000 a year versus the $5,000 it costs to put someone through drug court.

In addition to cost savings, Thornburg said the people who survive drug court make up for the $5,000 it cost to undergo the program by becoming a functioning member of society.

Another new trend the team has seen is that more addicts from the medical field are enrolling in drug court.

They have easier access to prescription painkillers, Williams said.

"When we first started drug court we maybe had three or four nurses and doctors," Williams said. "Since things started changing four years ago, we now have at least one person from the medical field in each class."

The opioid epidemic does not discriminate and has hit people from all walks of life, Thornburg said, from homeless people to the wealthy.

Many graduates have gone on to work with addicts, like the keynote speaker on graduation day, Sue Polston, who runs a program at Sunrise Community center, which works with addicts in a peer mentor setting.

Another graduate has opened a halfway house. Others have returned to their full-time jobs.

As for Bishop, she hopes to be a social worker for the elderly, another group of people she said are easily forgotten, just like addicts.

Bishop said graduation was like closing a chapter of her long journey where she had no control over her life and no coping skills. Now, she said she feels like she can handle anything and has built a support network to help her through rough times.

"For years I would say I wanted to go to college, but I never was in a stable house or I was homeless," Bishop said. "I just can't believe that this is my life now. I am really excited about my future for the first time in I don't know how long."